Vices and Principles
Josh Penzone
Winnie Downey peered through the slit blinds of her office window. Mike Draper plodded across the parking lot carrying a cardboard box. It felt like one of those maudlin cliched movie scenes after the hero was fired. She eyed her vice principal office décor. The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein stood upright atop the filing cabinet. Mike Draper had given it to her after her first day teaching. The inscription stated: It’ll read differently this June, and every June thereafter–Mike.
Ten years ago, she’d been Mike Draper’s student in this very building. Back then his puffy cheeks complemented his robust belly which he attempted to hide with a slew of untucked Hawaiian button-ups. He connected the literature to real life, to his life, to his students’ lives, spinning the palpable nature of fiction into a tangible reality. His AP Lit class felt like a humanity workshop, titillating their intellectual curiosity. Weeks before graduation, he said, “You ever consider teaching, Winn?” He winked. “Who knows, maybe we’d even be colleagues one day.” Goodbye majoring in Psychology and hello English Education. How excited she’d been before that first year of teaching started. Mr. Draper? My new colleague. My new friend. Maybe, one day, even my....
Her nose kissed the window. He was so thin now, not compliment thin, but are you okay? thin. He balanced the box on his knee to open his trunk with a key. He placed the box inside and then slammed it shut. How old was that car? His hands covered his face, and he convulsed for a few seconds, before taking deep breaths as his shoulders steadied. She wanted to run to him as if it was the end of an epic romance, and with music swelling, she’d say that pendulum shifting line, the right words, keeping him with her until the credits rolled.
Her physical approximation to him still couldn’t seduce her into liking the job. By mid-September of her first year, she felt like an actress cast in a role she couldn’t make believable. Her youth and newness quickly wore off with her students, eroding all likability as they soon saw her as an archnemesis sent to ruin 50 minutes of their day. She had always loved reading about interesting characters—which was why she originally wanted to be a psych major—but it turned out most students hated to read. She learned loving a subject didn’t mean she’d love teaching it. This truth began to bubble to the surface while student teaching, but the thought of letting down Mr. Draper made her snack on M&Ms by the handfuls. By the end of student teaching, her cooperating teacher was stunned by her incredible turnaround. “Winnie, if I’m being honest, in the beginning I had my doubts, but now I’m certain you’ll make a solid teacher.”
That impossible first teaching year created a dreadful nightly routine. Immediately after entering her apartment, she’d take a shower to wash the dread off the day. The shower spray’s warm hold triggered a calculated sobbing akin to the surviving gush of Old Faithful, and this timely rhythmic trust became her only comfort in the day. Afterwards, she’d put an ice pack on her puffy eyes before Facetiming her fiancé. He’d moved back home to Indianapolis to help with the family business after his dad had a heart attack—an unfair realness that took her own father when she was only eleven, the day before her first period. She’d forgotten specifics about her own father, relying on instincts cobbled from amorphous and olfactory memories. His musk smell as she slept on his shoulder while falling asleep. The way he’d say, “Love you, kiddo” while looking at her with admirable wonder. The energy when telling stories about his own parents since they died before she was born. She couldn’t recall specific details, just his excitement in sharing his feelings. Those nights her fiancé promised he’d move in with her once his dad was better—he’d say move in with such pressurized intent, as if it were a warning. After their talks, she’d sit on the poorly constructed couch from IKEA, spooning ice cream while swiping through Instagram stories, numbingly awaiting a fruitless oblivion of a life not taken. Her therapist reminded her Instagram was hyperbolic storytelling in images, a perception of what people wished their lives were. But still, her high school and college friends had moved to big cities, to different states, merging with the adult world, posting promises of their adult successes, and adult promotions, and adult pay raises, as they established adult foundations to secure their future adult selves. And where was she? She went from high school, to college, back to the same high school she’d graduated from to earn a living. It was too meta, like she was living some unwanted timeline, a Black Mirror episode she couldn’t escape even in predicting its twisty ending. To force herself to feel like an adult, she quickly (and strangely) got used to calling all her former teachers by their first names. Except Mr. Draper. For reasons she couldn’t even work out in therapy, she still felt like she was a student in his class. That first year, when she couldn’t sleep, she’d search if Mr. Draper had opened an Instagram account so they could be social media friends. She fantasized sending that friend request just to post pictures she knew he’d see.
During winter break of her first year of teaching, she accepted her engagement to her college boyfriend was nothing more than the customary next step in life and ended it. The familiar pang of terrifying loneliness emerged, but this time she didn’t deny its grip. They’d met at a freshman social mixer when Tom’s Hawaiian shirt stole her attention. Her opening line was “What’s your favorite poem?” His answer was all it took. Before college began, she committed herself to enjoy the tutelage of intimacy, to gain experience in the adult world, as if she were sampling flavors of ice cream. He’d been the third boy in the first week she’d kissed, but his kisses led to more, and after they had sex, she committed to their relationship to avoid calling herself names society unfairly used to label these choices. But … she supposed she did fall in love with him. Conveniently, they lived in opposite dorms their second year. They basically lived together off campus their third year. They traveled abroad opposing semesters their fourth year—which he said would be a true test of their future. Second semester senior year, she was too busy student teaching to even think about missing him while he was studying business in Luxembourg. When he returned, he proposed right there at the airport. He hugged her and spun her when she dumbly and inaudibly nodded at his proposal. The people from his cohort filmed the entire charade at the baggage claim. When she watched back the footage, her tears looked like tears of joy, amazing herself that she’d found a way to hide the fear of such an uncomfortable moment, even to herself, as if life was nothing more than a series of traps she’d set for herself.
She knew she didn’t truly love Tom when she cheated on him the previous semester in Ireland. She fell for a boy named Tadhg. After mispronouncing his name ten times, he finally said, in his best American accent, “No, dude, ‘Teege.’” She said it back. “There ya go, lass. It means poet. Who’s your favorite poet?” She told him. “Ahh, an ex-patriot. All great American writers find ways to leave their homeland, don’t they?” She asked if that’s why Joyce left Ireland. “Only to learn how much he loved Mother Ireland so he could leave her again. Sometimes we leave knowing when we return our hearts can properly love what we tried to love before, but life’s timing wouldn’t allow it then.”
Sex with Tieg introduced her to passion over obligation, which was maybe why she didn’t feel guilty for cheating. Deep down she knew her feelings for Tom weren’t sustainable, at least, not in the way she dreamt it’d be when she was a teenager, back when she’d romanticized the world’s marvels while reading Mr. Draper’s syllabus. One night, hours before her eighteenth birthday, she touched herself. She’d done this before, curiously stumbling upon its sensation at thirteen, becoming a fantastical compulsion she couldn’t quit, but this time it felt different, as if she wasn’t alone. As if Mr. Draper was with her. In class, she could tell Mr. Draper cloaked a truth, an untold secret he hid form everyone, maybe even himself, and the way he spoke in class about Shakespeare and Faulkner and Morrison exposed clues to this truth. And that night before her eighteenth birthday, lost in the coupling of herself and these thoughts, she finally understood he left those cryptic intimations just for her, a silent call for help to save him. Every romantic partner since impossibly competed with that ominous night, where she and the spiritual presence of Mr. Draper uncovered euphoria.
She pressed her hand against her office window. Draper looked at the school and saluted. She laughed at this irony. She saluted back, hoping he’d see her through the sun’s furious November morning’s blaze and smile. He didn’t.
On the last day of her second year of teaching, she made a pass at Mr. Draper. She was already buzzed when he walked into the bar. He sat by himself and ordered a club soda in a rocks glass. The faculty joked he was the only human void of vices. He exchanged smiles when teachers roused him for showing. He clanked his club soda against their beers and wines and mixed drinks. Bill Hauser, their principal, shook Mike’s shoulders with vigor. “Draper actually showed! I’m a man of my word. Next round’s on me!” Their cheers swallowed Draper’s meek wave. The moment the celebration passed, colleagues returned to their revelry anticipating a summer without students, leaving him alone with his club soda.
Winnie studied Draper, thinking about a night in high school when she and her friends passed around a warm bottle of white zinfandel, drunkenly giggling, gossiping about boys. They were all virgins, but this did not impede their curiosity about sex and what it’d feel like, and who they wished they’d lose their virginity to. Quickly, they all agreed high school boys were so annoying and so gross and so dumb and the topic of their conquest moved towards teachers.
“Mr. Foster is so nice. He’d make me feel safe.”
“He’s old! And I would never do that to Mrs. Foster. She’s my favorite!”
“Mine too! Seriously, I wish Mrs. Foster was my mom!”
“If she was your mom, it’d be like your dad taking my virginity, because I’d totally let Mr. Foster get up in here.”
Before the conversation fizzled, one noted Winnie’s silence.
“Winnie, which teacher would you do?”
“So obvi. She’d pick Draper.”
Winnie blushed, “No I wouldn’t.”
They all ganged up on her with their taunts:
“You totally would!”
“You talk about him all the time.”
“Winn, you’re like totally obsessed.”
“So obsessed.”
“It’s a bad obsession. Waste of time. He’s so gay.”
“He’s too fat to be gay.”
“So fat! Oh my God! He’s probably a virgin too.’
“Totally!”
“Oh my God,. Winn! You could lose it together.”
Everyone laughed, then stopped in unison, seeing Winn had something to confess.
“Doesn’t matter.” She murmured, trying to buck off reality’s weight. “It’d never happen. Not for real. Not for me.”
The girls’ collective empathy permeated the room as they cuddled Winnie. She laughed to ward of tears and called herself stupid and blamed the wine for making her so dumb. Then the funniest of the bunch said, “Forget him, Winn, he dresses like a well-fed homeless Hawaiian tourist. That’s not the memory you want for the first time.”
That day at the bar, while approaching Draper, she stared at his naked ring finger. He’d mention past relationships in class to augment a poem or story’s meaning, but he never mentioned dating someone in real time.
“Anyone sitting here?” she asked.
“Just you, kiddo.”
She cycled through his Rolodex of sobriquets, and she honestly couldn’t ever recall him referring to anyone else as “kiddo” in class. Draper was so dedicated to words, it seemed impossible he’d fully miss the suggestive nature of “kiddo”. Did this playful nickname surpassed even Draper’s own cognizance unlocking understanding to his subconscious flirting? This wishful hope combined with the empowering confidence from her buzz, engendered synthetic clarity. Yes! He had always seen her, the real her. Not just the awkward student. Not just the average teacher. But her. Oh, how wrong her therapist had been.
He clanked his club soda against her wine glass. He straightened his back and locked eyes with her, “How was year two?”
Winnie babbled about feeling better with timing and more confident in her lesson plans. She didn’t tell him teenage boys still annoyed her by saying inappropriate things about her body, but she wanted to. She desired turning the conversation towards her appearance, towards sex, to remind him she was no longer a child. That she had been with four people—no five, if that one time really counted. That she wasn’t the little naïve kid anymore who sat in the second seat on the far-left side of his classroom totally missing Shakespeare’s sex euphemisms—euphemisms she now taught with experienced confidence because she was an adult and did adult things. And at twenty-five, she finally felt sexy. Since she’d broken off her engagement, she either spent all her time outside of school preparing for lessons, grading, or working out. After her shower to wash away the morning run, she’d stand in front of the mirror and study her naked body. She’d begun to accept her body wholly, to be able to see all of it, not just the flaws, feeling worthy of desire and that ballooning self-respect needed to be explored physically.
“Do I dare disturb the universe?”
It went just liked she’d rehearsed.
Except for his look.
She tried to correct it.
“Prufrock is my favorite poem too…Mike.”
His grin, which through much sleepless retrospection stemmed from stunned politeness, but at the time, it mistakenly encouraged her to put her hand on his. He didn’t jolt back. Instead, he slowly stood and miraculously ignored everything, as if the moment never existed. Before she could apologize or have a drunken dumb-girl-crush meltdown, he said, “Hauser is really impressed with how much you’ve grown as a teacher. Are you up to teaching AP Lit with me? T.S. Eliot is on the syllabus.” He said this last part playfully, trying to usurp normality as the prominent tone. It worked. The vote of confidence to teach beside him—her dream since she changed her life goals—uprooted the embarrassment. “You’re the only young one with ambition in the department, Winn. If you haven’t noticed, our department is ancient, and pretty stuck in their ways. Time to pass the class to someone else. AP is a young mind’s game. Think about it.” He finished the rest of his club soda and then, simply and matter-of-factly, said, “Have a good summer.”
As she watched his old Ford Focus pull away, she wondered if—like her therapist suggested—would find happiness in Mike Draper’s resignation. Yet, when he idled at the four-way stop, a fatalistic fear penetrated this unwanted story arc. She’d probably never see him again. The year she taught AP Lit on her own, she bombarded Draper with questions. Sounds good or Give it time or Same thing happened to me plenty were his stock responses. One night, she called him crying. COVID derailed the classroom atmosphere. It’s not you. The kids just don’t want to be at school. All you can do is teach like it means something to you and then maybe it might mean something to them. That’s all any teacher can do. Even though he said all the right things, and she appreciated his wisdom and kindness, his words didn’t make sense like they did when was seventeen. She’d grown so overwhelmed by being underwhelmed with her inability to impact young lives, she quickly said yes when Hauser asked if she was interested in an open Vice Principal position. Now, instead of failing to encourage students (and herself) to be inspired by James Joyce or James Baldwin, she oversaw special education—which she had zero training in—staff scheduling, and students whose last names fell between A through F. And although Principal Hauser was impossible to say no to, if she was being honest with herself, no classroom, no kids, no lesson plans, no grading, no teaching, and no working in Mr. Draper’s shadow—it was obvious the AP Lit students wanted him and not her—sounded amazing. When she told Draper she took the position, he winked and said, “Good for you, kiddo. I wish I’d gotten out of the classroom when I was your age. I’m excited for you.” Then he added. “You’ll be great.”
With the Ford Focus out of sight, she opened her bottom desk drawer and grabbed a handful of peanut M&Ms. While she chewed, she squeezed her left bicep, feeling the difference between muscle and the other thing. Deep down, somewhere locked, something never even said in therapy, she knew the only reason she didn’t quit the job completely was the perverse hope Mr Draper—Mike—would continue the conversation from that day at the bar. He’d be patient and sincere like he was with her when she was a student, and he’d listen to her speak her uncensored mind, making her frozen anxiety finally melt. But the moment she gave him back AP Lit and became his boss, she also knew this conversation could never happen.
His boss….
Jesus, the education system is broken. She’d think this every morning as she watched her former teachers lumber across the parking lot knowing she—an average teacher at best—was evaluating them.
~ ~ ~
The rest of Winnie’s day remained its typical horribleness, yet, the ugliness of her days had become routine, and routine—no matter how awful—still had its comfort.
First period, she roamed the halls as an administrative presence. She’d caught five students vaping THC, all repeat offenders. She confiscated their vape pens and told them to sit in the office while she called their parents to pick them up. Despite literally committing a crime, nothing happened to these children. Ever.
Second period, she had an unpleasant exchange with one of the parents of the repeat vape offenders as the mom tried to suggest her son’s vaping was medicinal. As an admin, Winnie quickly learned parents justified their child’s bad behavior in an attempt to clear their own name as a lackluster guardian.
Third period, she cut and pasted emails from angry parents and put them into ChatGPT requesting its A.I. to make them sound “nice.”
Fourth period, she showed a picture to a student and asked, “Are these your breasts?” She hated that it was on her district issued phone, but how else could she show it or receive it? The sucking hypocrisy engulfed in these conversations were enough to drain an ocean.
Since the school blocked all cell service, the school’s WiFi had become the students’ sole option if they wanted to connect to the outside world. The doom scrolling addicts couldn’t keep off their phones even though they knew the school could access their devices using the school’s network. Since Winnie was the only female admin, too much of her time was calling down girls to explain child pornography to them and how the images are still illegal even if said image was sent to another underaged person. It made her sick that all the I.T. males at CO had access to these images, but her job was to receive the picture, confirm the student’s identity, and remind them they were using a public education’s network to send underaged nude images. Usually, when she asked these girls why they sent the image they’d shrug or mumble, but today, when speaking to the star student from her freshman Honors English 9 class three years ago, the obligatory shrug was no longer viable.
“Seriously, Ashlynn. Help me out. Why send this picture to a guy? You know he’s just going to share it with his friends, which he did, yesterday at 11:09 A.M., which is why we know about it.”
“How’d you even find it? Some district employed sicko just scrolling through images looking for nude teen girls? Shouldn’t he be the one interrogated?”
Winnie ran her tongue over teeth, scavenging for peanut M&M remnants. “A parent of a boy called the school yesterday and told us about it because the parent wanted to know why her son had this image of you on his phone sent during the school day. The boy told his mom all the names, which were then searched, and here we are.”
“That’s so gross. Like, so gross.”
“Not disagreeing, but we can’t have certain underage photos sent via the school’s WiFi. We simply can’t.” She eyed the bottom desk drawer. She’d been saving the yellow ones. They didn’t taste any different, but for some reason, the yellow ones made her happier. “I mean, why would you send it in the first place?”
“If I was eighteen, would I be sitting here?”
“Ashlynn, I’m not that much older than you. Help me understand. Forget the school’s network. Forget the law. Why would you—”
“Miss Downey, are you saying you’ve never sent a nude before? I mean, I had you freshman year, and back then, you were, well…” she paused, but said it anyway, “hot. Not that you aren’t still kinda pretty, but you were a total smoke-show then.”
“Ashlynn, this isn’t about me. It’s about you and making better choices.”
“So, you’ve never sent a nude? To anyone? Ever?”
“Ashlynn—”
“You ever get one?” She shook her head. “Boys think their dicks are so important, right? They don’t even ask. They just send it. Guess that’s why they are called dicks.”
Winnie had received an unsolicited pic, once. She quickly deleted that dating app.
“At least be hard if you are going to send it, am I right? What’s the point of a flaccid, rubbery nub?”
“Ashlynn!” Winnie rarely yelled, but she didn’t know what else to do. “Ashlynn, just, please have more respect for yourself. Okay?”
She shrugged. “It’s my body, Miss Downey. It’s my choice. No one forced me. I chose to send that pic.”
“It’s illegal.”
“You know what’s crazy? The age of consent in Ohio is sixteen. I can screw a man in his forties if I give him consent, but I can’t send him a nude. Maybe we should table all conversations on morality until the legal system figures out their shit.”
Ashlynn stood, like she was the one running the meeting. Winnie suddenly wondered where Mike Draper went. Did he go home? Did he get on the interstate and keep driving? Did he get breakfast? Did he even eat anymore? He’d gotten so skinny.
Ashlynn turned the knob, but didn’t open the door.
“If I send them nudes, then—and this is weird, I know—but they leave me alone. It’s like the picture is enough for them, and that’s all it is, just a picture. It’s not me. It’s an image with filters and edits. My nipples look nothing like that. I know it makes them jerk off or whatever, but that picture isn’t me. It’s not real. It’s just some dumb fantasy they’ve created for themselves. Fantasies aren’t real.” She shrugged. “Even if you can see them. They aren’t real.”
Ashlynn lingered in the doorway, seemingly turning over a thought, a thought she chose to keep hidden from Winnie. After she left, Winnie wondered if she’d also keep it hidden from herself.
Fifth period, Winnie went to McDonald’s for lunch and ate a McFlurry in the school’s parking lot, watching students tramp all over the campus grounds, doing whatever, knowing it was against the rules, but choosing not to act.
Sixth period, during lunch duty, she pretended not to hear all the awful things kids said with zero consideration she was feet away.
Seventh period, she called parents of students who were in danger of failing the semester, but no one ever answered those calls. Most phones had the same automated message: “The voicemail box is full.”
Eighth period, there was a fight.
Principal Hauser closed his office door and sat on his desk. Winnie wheeled out his office chair and positioned herself in front of Faris, a skinny, wiry senior, with black rimmed glasses, almost the same shade as his dark, Somali skin.
“You okay?” Hauser asked pointing to his eye, mirroring the budding bruise on Faris’ face.
Faris had played basketball his first three years of high school, even started last year, but didn’t try out this year. He said he couldn’t lose his job at Jets Pizza. Once he brought his six-year-old little brother to school with him. When asked why, he said, “Didn’t want him home alone with Dad—not even for an hour.”
“Last time you were in here, you said you were teaching yourself to read the Quran in Arabic. Said you wanted to realign yourself with your inner peace.” Hauser smiled. “Said Allah would guide you, so you’d stop fighting. I’m guessing you didn’t do the reading.”
“Facts,” Faris said, letting a grin slip.
The students liked Hauser. He was always in the halls, always talking to them. There were 1802 students in the building and Hauser knew all of them by name, first and last. He even knew something about them too. He was the same way with the teachers. His rich, black skin seemed to make his white teeth and the whites of his eyes gleam with an earnestness people instinctively sought. Faris had the same look. Soon, Faris was grinning and talking to Hauser. Winnie always sat in Hauser’s office after a fight. Hauser wanted her to observe how to navigate teenage boys revved up on testosterone and pride after a physical altercation.
“Was the other boy being racist?”
“Lowkey,” Faris said.
“Thought maybe that was the case with that kid.” He grimaced. “Kids said you threw the first punch.”
“Wasn’t a punch. I slapped him.”
“You slapped him?”
“He was acting like a little bitch, so I slapped him like a bitch.”
Hauser eyed Winnie to stop her from intervening. Now wasn’t the time to explain sexism to Faris.
“That might help your case, but this is strike three, Faris. You’ll have an expulsion hearing now.”
Faris shrugged.
“If me slapping some white boy is more offensive than white dudes walking behind little brothers with an app on their phone making whipping sounds, then whatever, man.”
“He was doing what?”
Hauser stood. Hayden, the other boy, was down the hall in Vice Principal Bowen’s office. Hauser took a step, but Winnie grabbed his wrist. When he looked at her, she shook her head and the frenzy dancing in his eyes slowly settled. He returned his attention to Faris.
“Aside from that highkey, not lowkey, but highkey, very racist shit, did Hayden do anything else to you?”
“He wasn’t doing it to me.”
“Who was he doing it to?”
Faris shrugged. “Don’t know. Some freshman. Saw the little dude crying and then saw white boy laughing and making his phone out to be like a whip. That’s when I heard the sound. Couldn’t do nothing like everyone else, so I went over and slapped his ass. Then he swung back. Then I swung back. Then you showed up.”
Hauser looked at Winnie. He shrugged. “Faris, go on home.”
“You calling Dad? If you do, call him now, you know I need to translate.”
Hauser shook his head. “Go on home. We’ll talk in the morning.”
Faris grabbed his bookbag. “For real though, if you’re calling mom or dad I’ll stay and translate. That is if they even pick up.”
“Not calling home today, but you need to be in my office first thing tomorrow morning. That’s the deal.”
Faris muttered “cool” and left.
“You’re not calling home?” Winnie asked.
“Doesn’t matter. It always goes to voice mail. Even when I use the translation app, it never seems to get anywhere with them.” He scratched head. “Remind me to get that kid breakfast tomorrow. He qualifies for food, but I never see him eat.” After a silence, he said, “Thanks, Winn.”
“For what?”
“For stopping me from killing that Hayden kid.” He shook his head. “How is it some white boys are more racist today than when I was in school?”
Hauser moved around the desk and Winnie traded spots with him. He let out a deep sigh and Winnie realized it’s probably the first time he’d sat down all day.
“One of those days,” she said.
“Every day is one of those days.” He’d knocked over his silver engraved nameplate when he sat down, sending it askew. He ran his fingers over the letters. “You doing okay?”
“Had a weird conversation with Ashlynn Yoder, but otherwise, same old same old.”
“No, not with the job. The job is … the job. It’s whatever. You okay with …” he trailed off as he bobbed his head and pointed at the window.
“You mean Draper. Yeah, I mean, he resigned, right? His choice. We should respect it.”
“Sure. Let’s pretend it was his choice.” Hauser gave an incredulous look reminding Winnie there was so much about the business of education she didn’t understand. “This job, I swear to you, this job used to make sense. The job’s always been exhausting, but it made sense. Actual sense. Hand to God, it did.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a piece of gum. He offered a piece to Winnie, but she shook her head. “We give, and we give, and we give. Give our time. Give our kindness. Give our patience. Give our understanding. Give second, third, twentieth chances and on and on.” He added another piece of gum and then another. “What has changed are the returns … or lack thereof. The stress and the pains used to be countered with the good. True good. Honest good. Now, each year, we are hacked down to the stump and need the summer to see if we can grow back.”
He added one more piece of gum and moved to the window. He chomped for ten more seconds before removing the wad and tossing it in the trash.
“Did you see him salute the building this morning?
“Yeah. I saluted back.”
Hauser laughed. “Me too.” He popped another piece of gum. “Call in sick tomorrow, Winn.”
“We have the National Honors Society induction tomorrow. I can’t—”
“Who cares. Take a mental health day. Decompress. If for no other reason to remind yourself this place will function whether you’re not here. If I’m not here. If Mike Draper isn’t here.” He tapped the window. “I worked with the man for two decades. I was a science teacher when he first started. He meant a lot to me, so I can only imagine what he meant to you.” He popped another piece of gum and continued to stare threw the slits in the blinds, past the parking, to anywhere else.
~ ~ ~
Winnie followed Hauser’s advice and put in for a personal day—she couldn’t lie and say she was sick. After she parked her car, she surprised herself by walking to The Goat, the restaurant/bar in her apartment complex, and ordered a Pinot Grigio.
As she sipped from her third glass, she scrolled through her last text exchange with Draper. They used to text all the time, or at least she’d text, and he’d respond. She’d have nightly questions about AP Lit and soon they were just texting about movies and books and politics, but in looking back over the thread, it wasn’t an exchange, just Draper answering her questions.
Last year, after Draper’s mom died, the texts essentially stopped. Thinking of you. So sorry for your loss. He never responded. She didn’t text him again until he’d been put on leave:
Winnie: Everything will work out.
Mr. Draper: You really shouldn’t be texting me.
Winnie: I know the protocol. Just wanted to say I know you’ll be back soon, and that the students miss you.
Mr. Draper: You really shouldn’t be texting me.
Mr. Draper: Take care, Kiddo.
She refused to read the unsent message she’d been drafted weeks ago.
“Miss Downey?”
It took a moment to recognize him. The last time she’d seen him was in her English 11
class her first year of teaching. His skinny teenage boyness had morphed into a broad-shouldered man. His moptop unkempt hair was now styled with gel and his sides were closely shaved. His face looked a bit puffy, but his arms seemed strong and his chest robust. A salmon collared shirt hugged his chest and biceps while khaki shorts grabbed his midthigh.
“Justin Applegate? How are you?”
“Officially an adult.” He tilted his beer bottle in her direction.
“Happens to all of us,” she said, feeling like she just lied
Justin was one of those lazy kids with a natural intelligence, but he hadn’t really grown those smarts because of his non-existent work ethic. He charmed his way through high school, getting grades he didn’t deserve, which happens a lot, especially with white boys.
“Sorry to bother you, Miss Downey, but I saw you and I just had to apologize for being such an asshat back in the day. And … I wanted to say you were right.”
“Right?”
In talking she realized how buzzed she’d gotten. She noticed his nice smile. She noticed the way his shirt’s sleeve tightly gripped his strong arms. She noticed all his kiddom was gone. Yet, despite his objective attractiveness and physical growth, to her, it was still six years ago, and all she wanted was for him to be absent from class to not add to the ruin of her day.
“Miss Downey—”
“Adult to adult. Call me Winnie.” Her drunken voice made this sound flirty.
He tipped his beer towards her. “Um—Winnie—you told me college would kick my ass because I wasn’t developing any study skills. And you were right. I almost failed out my freshman year. I was put on academic probation. My parents even made me pay them back first year’s tuition. But then I remembered what you told me: if I put as much effort into bettering myself as I did in figuring out ways to sway people to let me get by, then I could achieve anything. So, in my second year at OU, I buckled down, and then my third year I even made Dean’s List. I even graduated on time. Now I work at Nationwide as a system’s analyst and make six figures. How crazy is that?”
Winnie didn’t remember saying this advice to him. That first year was just a blur of pain and crying and stress and other miseries like driving to Indianapolis to break off her engagement. And when it came to Justin Applegate, all she remembered was a few laughs buried in an abundance of irksome moments. He wasn’t something she cared to revisit.
Justin ordered her a drink and told the bartender to put it on his tab.
“Thank you, Justin, but really you don’t need to—"
“It’s the least I could do. I don’t remember what happened in The Incredible Catsby—”
“The Great Gatsby?”
“Right. The Great Gatsby, but I do remember that you cared about me when no other adult seemed to. So, thank you.” He looked around seeing if she was there with anyone. “I’ll leave you to it.” He tilted his beer. “Winnie.”
She cringed in hearing him call her by her first name, glaring as he drifted back across the bar to sit down with a small group of attractive twenty-somethings day drinking. She didn’t recognize the others. Even Justin had moved on from high school. He scooted next to a pretty girl and put his arm around her small waist. Winnie rubbed her hand against her stomach and then pinched her thigh.
“Need a menu?” the bartender asked.
Winnie thought about all the sugar in white wine and shook her head. She unlocked her phone and read the unsent message to Mike Draper.
Winnie: When this whole administrative leave nonsense is finished, maybe we could get dinner sometime? I’m really doubting my choice to leave the classroom, and I just need to talk it out.
His career teetered on the brink, and she thought about herself, needing him to say the right thing to make her feel better. So selfish. She went to delete the unsent text when wavy bubbles appeared.
Frantic, she set her phone face down and turned to Justin, recalling a monologue from Mr. Draper when he saw how much she was struggling to connect with her students her first year teaching:
To them, we stay trapped in that space, Winn, like some forgotten time capsule. Students move on and live their lives, and if we did our job well, then they take any inspiration we offered with them. So sure, part of us goes on their journey with them, but we don’t know that part and never will. So, here’s the trick to teaching: you need to be okay in never knowing the good we’ve done. It exists, but it isn’t tangible. Not to us. Accepting this reality has to be enough. It has to.
After today, she would never say another word to Justin Applegate, and at some point, she’d most likely forget about him completely. Just like she’d forget about Ashlynn and Faris and all the others, but they might remember her. They might carry fragments of her attempts to help them. She flipped over her phone. No new messages. Maybe Mike Draper saw her unsent message and thought she was texting him. Maybe he clicked on their thread just to delete it, to move on, a life away from education, and all people connected to it. Maybe a nosey partner was going through his phone. Maybe…
Suddenly she caught herself smiling, a drunken joke to herself, thinking how Ashlynn would laugh. Should I send Mr. Draper a nude?
Justin Applegate laughed wildly as he pulled that pretty girl closer to him. Winnie couldn’t believe that something she said to him when she was twenty-two—something she doesn’t even remember saying—became a safety buoy in his life’s quagmire. And while she was flattered, she didn’t care, because hearing this news from Justin Applegate didn’t change her, it only changed him. Relationships should have a give and take, something to create balance, something helping both sides to grow, to be better. Her throat grew dry and couldn’t swallow. She’d been carrying inspiration from Mr. Draper for a decade. It'd become so important to her throughout her lifetime, she needed to be close to it, as it augmented every choice, trying to recreate what she felt sitting in her student desk on her last day of high school, reading the note he’d written to her on her last essay—a note he’d certainly forgotten—rereading it a thousand times since. She’d grown dependent on his belief, like it was a drug, making Mr. Draper—Mike Draper—Mike—her unknowing dealer.
She deleted her unsent text, wrote a new one, and sent it without hesitation.
Winnie: Sorry for making you my Giving Tree. Take care.
She gulped her wine then held her empty glass to Justin as a thank you, but after he nodded, she didn’t release him from her stare. He smiled at first, then his expression changed, going flat, then uneasy, until he finally looked away. But she continued scrutinizing him, daring him to see her in this intoxicating moment, to see the real her, whoever that was.
Josh Penzone
Winnie Downey peered through the slit blinds of her office window. Mike Draper plodded across the parking lot carrying a cardboard box. It felt like one of those maudlin cliched movie scenes after the hero was fired. She eyed her vice principal office décor. The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein stood upright atop the filing cabinet. Mike Draper had given it to her after her first day teaching. The inscription stated: It’ll read differently this June, and every June thereafter–Mike.
Ten years ago, she’d been Mike Draper’s student in this very building. Back then his puffy cheeks complemented his robust belly which he attempted to hide with a slew of untucked Hawaiian button-ups. He connected the literature to real life, to his life, to his students’ lives, spinning the palpable nature of fiction into a tangible reality. His AP Lit class felt like a humanity workshop, titillating their intellectual curiosity. Weeks before graduation, he said, “You ever consider teaching, Winn?” He winked. “Who knows, maybe we’d even be colleagues one day.” Goodbye majoring in Psychology and hello English Education. How excited she’d been before that first year of teaching started. Mr. Draper? My new colleague. My new friend. Maybe, one day, even my....
Her nose kissed the window. He was so thin now, not compliment thin, but are you okay? thin. He balanced the box on his knee to open his trunk with a key. He placed the box inside and then slammed it shut. How old was that car? His hands covered his face, and he convulsed for a few seconds, before taking deep breaths as his shoulders steadied. She wanted to run to him as if it was the end of an epic romance, and with music swelling, she’d say that pendulum shifting line, the right words, keeping him with her until the credits rolled.
Her physical approximation to him still couldn’t seduce her into liking the job. By mid-September of her first year, she felt like an actress cast in a role she couldn’t make believable. Her youth and newness quickly wore off with her students, eroding all likability as they soon saw her as an archnemesis sent to ruin 50 minutes of their day. She had always loved reading about interesting characters—which was why she originally wanted to be a psych major—but it turned out most students hated to read. She learned loving a subject didn’t mean she’d love teaching it. This truth began to bubble to the surface while student teaching, but the thought of letting down Mr. Draper made her snack on M&Ms by the handfuls. By the end of student teaching, her cooperating teacher was stunned by her incredible turnaround. “Winnie, if I’m being honest, in the beginning I had my doubts, but now I’m certain you’ll make a solid teacher.”
That impossible first teaching year created a dreadful nightly routine. Immediately after entering her apartment, she’d take a shower to wash the dread off the day. The shower spray’s warm hold triggered a calculated sobbing akin to the surviving gush of Old Faithful, and this timely rhythmic trust became her only comfort in the day. Afterwards, she’d put an ice pack on her puffy eyes before Facetiming her fiancé. He’d moved back home to Indianapolis to help with the family business after his dad had a heart attack—an unfair realness that took her own father when she was only eleven, the day before her first period. She’d forgotten specifics about her own father, relying on instincts cobbled from amorphous and olfactory memories. His musk smell as she slept on his shoulder while falling asleep. The way he’d say, “Love you, kiddo” while looking at her with admirable wonder. The energy when telling stories about his own parents since they died before she was born. She couldn’t recall specific details, just his excitement in sharing his feelings. Those nights her fiancé promised he’d move in with her once his dad was better—he’d say move in with such pressurized intent, as if it were a warning. After their talks, she’d sit on the poorly constructed couch from IKEA, spooning ice cream while swiping through Instagram stories, numbingly awaiting a fruitless oblivion of a life not taken. Her therapist reminded her Instagram was hyperbolic storytelling in images, a perception of what people wished their lives were. But still, her high school and college friends had moved to big cities, to different states, merging with the adult world, posting promises of their adult successes, and adult promotions, and adult pay raises, as they established adult foundations to secure their future adult selves. And where was she? She went from high school, to college, back to the same high school she’d graduated from to earn a living. It was too meta, like she was living some unwanted timeline, a Black Mirror episode she couldn’t escape even in predicting its twisty ending. To force herself to feel like an adult, she quickly (and strangely) got used to calling all her former teachers by their first names. Except Mr. Draper. For reasons she couldn’t even work out in therapy, she still felt like she was a student in his class. That first year, when she couldn’t sleep, she’d search if Mr. Draper had opened an Instagram account so they could be social media friends. She fantasized sending that friend request just to post pictures she knew he’d see.
During winter break of her first year of teaching, she accepted her engagement to her college boyfriend was nothing more than the customary next step in life and ended it. The familiar pang of terrifying loneliness emerged, but this time she didn’t deny its grip. They’d met at a freshman social mixer when Tom’s Hawaiian shirt stole her attention. Her opening line was “What’s your favorite poem?” His answer was all it took. Before college began, she committed herself to enjoy the tutelage of intimacy, to gain experience in the adult world, as if she were sampling flavors of ice cream. He’d been the third boy in the first week she’d kissed, but his kisses led to more, and after they had sex, she committed to their relationship to avoid calling herself names society unfairly used to label these choices. But … she supposed she did fall in love with him. Conveniently, they lived in opposite dorms their second year. They basically lived together off campus their third year. They traveled abroad opposing semesters their fourth year—which he said would be a true test of their future. Second semester senior year, she was too busy student teaching to even think about missing him while he was studying business in Luxembourg. When he returned, he proposed right there at the airport. He hugged her and spun her when she dumbly and inaudibly nodded at his proposal. The people from his cohort filmed the entire charade at the baggage claim. When she watched back the footage, her tears looked like tears of joy, amazing herself that she’d found a way to hide the fear of such an uncomfortable moment, even to herself, as if life was nothing more than a series of traps she’d set for herself.
She knew she didn’t truly love Tom when she cheated on him the previous semester in Ireland. She fell for a boy named Tadhg. After mispronouncing his name ten times, he finally said, in his best American accent, “No, dude, ‘Teege.’” She said it back. “There ya go, lass. It means poet. Who’s your favorite poet?” She told him. “Ahh, an ex-patriot. All great American writers find ways to leave their homeland, don’t they?” She asked if that’s why Joyce left Ireland. “Only to learn how much he loved Mother Ireland so he could leave her again. Sometimes we leave knowing when we return our hearts can properly love what we tried to love before, but life’s timing wouldn’t allow it then.”
Sex with Tieg introduced her to passion over obligation, which was maybe why she didn’t feel guilty for cheating. Deep down she knew her feelings for Tom weren’t sustainable, at least, not in the way she dreamt it’d be when she was a teenager, back when she’d romanticized the world’s marvels while reading Mr. Draper’s syllabus. One night, hours before her eighteenth birthday, she touched herself. She’d done this before, curiously stumbling upon its sensation at thirteen, becoming a fantastical compulsion she couldn’t quit, but this time it felt different, as if she wasn’t alone. As if Mr. Draper was with her. In class, she could tell Mr. Draper cloaked a truth, an untold secret he hid form everyone, maybe even himself, and the way he spoke in class about Shakespeare and Faulkner and Morrison exposed clues to this truth. And that night before her eighteenth birthday, lost in the coupling of herself and these thoughts, she finally understood he left those cryptic intimations just for her, a silent call for help to save him. Every romantic partner since impossibly competed with that ominous night, where she and the spiritual presence of Mr. Draper uncovered euphoria.
She pressed her hand against her office window. Draper looked at the school and saluted. She laughed at this irony. She saluted back, hoping he’d see her through the sun’s furious November morning’s blaze and smile. He didn’t.
On the last day of her second year of teaching, she made a pass at Mr. Draper. She was already buzzed when he walked into the bar. He sat by himself and ordered a club soda in a rocks glass. The faculty joked he was the only human void of vices. He exchanged smiles when teachers roused him for showing. He clanked his club soda against their beers and wines and mixed drinks. Bill Hauser, their principal, shook Mike’s shoulders with vigor. “Draper actually showed! I’m a man of my word. Next round’s on me!” Their cheers swallowed Draper’s meek wave. The moment the celebration passed, colleagues returned to their revelry anticipating a summer without students, leaving him alone with his club soda.
Winnie studied Draper, thinking about a night in high school when she and her friends passed around a warm bottle of white zinfandel, drunkenly giggling, gossiping about boys. They were all virgins, but this did not impede their curiosity about sex and what it’d feel like, and who they wished they’d lose their virginity to. Quickly, they all agreed high school boys were so annoying and so gross and so dumb and the topic of their conquest moved towards teachers.
“Mr. Foster is so nice. He’d make me feel safe.”
“He’s old! And I would never do that to Mrs. Foster. She’s my favorite!”
“Mine too! Seriously, I wish Mrs. Foster was my mom!”
“If she was your mom, it’d be like your dad taking my virginity, because I’d totally let Mr. Foster get up in here.”
Before the conversation fizzled, one noted Winnie’s silence.
“Winnie, which teacher would you do?”
“So obvi. She’d pick Draper.”
Winnie blushed, “No I wouldn’t.”
They all ganged up on her with their taunts:
“You totally would!”
“You talk about him all the time.”
“Winn, you’re like totally obsessed.”
“So obsessed.”
“It’s a bad obsession. Waste of time. He’s so gay.”
“He’s too fat to be gay.”
“So fat! Oh my God! He’s probably a virgin too.’
“Totally!”
“Oh my God,. Winn! You could lose it together.”
Everyone laughed, then stopped in unison, seeing Winn had something to confess.
“Doesn’t matter.” She murmured, trying to buck off reality’s weight. “It’d never happen. Not for real. Not for me.”
The girls’ collective empathy permeated the room as they cuddled Winnie. She laughed to ward of tears and called herself stupid and blamed the wine for making her so dumb. Then the funniest of the bunch said, “Forget him, Winn, he dresses like a well-fed homeless Hawaiian tourist. That’s not the memory you want for the first time.”
That day at the bar, while approaching Draper, she stared at his naked ring finger. He’d mention past relationships in class to augment a poem or story’s meaning, but he never mentioned dating someone in real time.
“Anyone sitting here?” she asked.
“Just you, kiddo.”
She cycled through his Rolodex of sobriquets, and she honestly couldn’t ever recall him referring to anyone else as “kiddo” in class. Draper was so dedicated to words, it seemed impossible he’d fully miss the suggestive nature of “kiddo”. Did this playful nickname surpassed even Draper’s own cognizance unlocking understanding to his subconscious flirting? This wishful hope combined with the empowering confidence from her buzz, engendered synthetic clarity. Yes! He had always seen her, the real her. Not just the awkward student. Not just the average teacher. But her. Oh, how wrong her therapist had been.
He clanked his club soda against her wine glass. He straightened his back and locked eyes with her, “How was year two?”
Winnie babbled about feeling better with timing and more confident in her lesson plans. She didn’t tell him teenage boys still annoyed her by saying inappropriate things about her body, but she wanted to. She desired turning the conversation towards her appearance, towards sex, to remind him she was no longer a child. That she had been with four people—no five, if that one time really counted. That she wasn’t the little naïve kid anymore who sat in the second seat on the far-left side of his classroom totally missing Shakespeare’s sex euphemisms—euphemisms she now taught with experienced confidence because she was an adult and did adult things. And at twenty-five, she finally felt sexy. Since she’d broken off her engagement, she either spent all her time outside of school preparing for lessons, grading, or working out. After her shower to wash away the morning run, she’d stand in front of the mirror and study her naked body. She’d begun to accept her body wholly, to be able to see all of it, not just the flaws, feeling worthy of desire and that ballooning self-respect needed to be explored physically.
“Do I dare disturb the universe?”
It went just liked she’d rehearsed.
Except for his look.
She tried to correct it.
“Prufrock is my favorite poem too…Mike.”
His grin, which through much sleepless retrospection stemmed from stunned politeness, but at the time, it mistakenly encouraged her to put her hand on his. He didn’t jolt back. Instead, he slowly stood and miraculously ignored everything, as if the moment never existed. Before she could apologize or have a drunken dumb-girl-crush meltdown, he said, “Hauser is really impressed with how much you’ve grown as a teacher. Are you up to teaching AP Lit with me? T.S. Eliot is on the syllabus.” He said this last part playfully, trying to usurp normality as the prominent tone. It worked. The vote of confidence to teach beside him—her dream since she changed her life goals—uprooted the embarrassment. “You’re the only young one with ambition in the department, Winn. If you haven’t noticed, our department is ancient, and pretty stuck in their ways. Time to pass the class to someone else. AP is a young mind’s game. Think about it.” He finished the rest of his club soda and then, simply and matter-of-factly, said, “Have a good summer.”
As she watched his old Ford Focus pull away, she wondered if—like her therapist suggested—would find happiness in Mike Draper’s resignation. Yet, when he idled at the four-way stop, a fatalistic fear penetrated this unwanted story arc. She’d probably never see him again. The year she taught AP Lit on her own, she bombarded Draper with questions. Sounds good or Give it time or Same thing happened to me plenty were his stock responses. One night, she called him crying. COVID derailed the classroom atmosphere. It’s not you. The kids just don’t want to be at school. All you can do is teach like it means something to you and then maybe it might mean something to them. That’s all any teacher can do. Even though he said all the right things, and she appreciated his wisdom and kindness, his words didn’t make sense like they did when was seventeen. She’d grown so overwhelmed by being underwhelmed with her inability to impact young lives, she quickly said yes when Hauser asked if she was interested in an open Vice Principal position. Now, instead of failing to encourage students (and herself) to be inspired by James Joyce or James Baldwin, she oversaw special education—which she had zero training in—staff scheduling, and students whose last names fell between A through F. And although Principal Hauser was impossible to say no to, if she was being honest with herself, no classroom, no kids, no lesson plans, no grading, no teaching, and no working in Mr. Draper’s shadow—it was obvious the AP Lit students wanted him and not her—sounded amazing. When she told Draper she took the position, he winked and said, “Good for you, kiddo. I wish I’d gotten out of the classroom when I was your age. I’m excited for you.” Then he added. “You’ll be great.”
With the Ford Focus out of sight, she opened her bottom desk drawer and grabbed a handful of peanut M&Ms. While she chewed, she squeezed her left bicep, feeling the difference between muscle and the other thing. Deep down, somewhere locked, something never even said in therapy, she knew the only reason she didn’t quit the job completely was the perverse hope Mr Draper—Mike—would continue the conversation from that day at the bar. He’d be patient and sincere like he was with her when she was a student, and he’d listen to her speak her uncensored mind, making her frozen anxiety finally melt. But the moment she gave him back AP Lit and became his boss, she also knew this conversation could never happen.
His boss….
Jesus, the education system is broken. She’d think this every morning as she watched her former teachers lumber across the parking lot knowing she—an average teacher at best—was evaluating them.
~ ~ ~
The rest of Winnie’s day remained its typical horribleness, yet, the ugliness of her days had become routine, and routine—no matter how awful—still had its comfort.
First period, she roamed the halls as an administrative presence. She’d caught five students vaping THC, all repeat offenders. She confiscated their vape pens and told them to sit in the office while she called their parents to pick them up. Despite literally committing a crime, nothing happened to these children. Ever.
Second period, she had an unpleasant exchange with one of the parents of the repeat vape offenders as the mom tried to suggest her son’s vaping was medicinal. As an admin, Winnie quickly learned parents justified their child’s bad behavior in an attempt to clear their own name as a lackluster guardian.
Third period, she cut and pasted emails from angry parents and put them into ChatGPT requesting its A.I. to make them sound “nice.”
Fourth period, she showed a picture to a student and asked, “Are these your breasts?” She hated that it was on her district issued phone, but how else could she show it or receive it? The sucking hypocrisy engulfed in these conversations were enough to drain an ocean.
Since the school blocked all cell service, the school’s WiFi had become the students’ sole option if they wanted to connect to the outside world. The doom scrolling addicts couldn’t keep off their phones even though they knew the school could access their devices using the school’s network. Since Winnie was the only female admin, too much of her time was calling down girls to explain child pornography to them and how the images are still illegal even if said image was sent to another underaged person. It made her sick that all the I.T. males at CO had access to these images, but her job was to receive the picture, confirm the student’s identity, and remind them they were using a public education’s network to send underaged nude images. Usually, when she asked these girls why they sent the image they’d shrug or mumble, but today, when speaking to the star student from her freshman Honors English 9 class three years ago, the obligatory shrug was no longer viable.
“Seriously, Ashlynn. Help me out. Why send this picture to a guy? You know he’s just going to share it with his friends, which he did, yesterday at 11:09 A.M., which is why we know about it.”
“How’d you even find it? Some district employed sicko just scrolling through images looking for nude teen girls? Shouldn’t he be the one interrogated?”
Winnie ran her tongue over teeth, scavenging for peanut M&M remnants. “A parent of a boy called the school yesterday and told us about it because the parent wanted to know why her son had this image of you on his phone sent during the school day. The boy told his mom all the names, which were then searched, and here we are.”
“That’s so gross. Like, so gross.”
“Not disagreeing, but we can’t have certain underage photos sent via the school’s WiFi. We simply can’t.” She eyed the bottom desk drawer. She’d been saving the yellow ones. They didn’t taste any different, but for some reason, the yellow ones made her happier. “I mean, why would you send it in the first place?”
“If I was eighteen, would I be sitting here?”
“Ashlynn, I’m not that much older than you. Help me understand. Forget the school’s network. Forget the law. Why would you—”
“Miss Downey, are you saying you’ve never sent a nude before? I mean, I had you freshman year, and back then, you were, well…” she paused, but said it anyway, “hot. Not that you aren’t still kinda pretty, but you were a total smoke-show then.”
“Ashlynn, this isn’t about me. It’s about you and making better choices.”
“So, you’ve never sent a nude? To anyone? Ever?”
“Ashlynn—”
“You ever get one?” She shook her head. “Boys think their dicks are so important, right? They don’t even ask. They just send it. Guess that’s why they are called dicks.”
Winnie had received an unsolicited pic, once. She quickly deleted that dating app.
“At least be hard if you are going to send it, am I right? What’s the point of a flaccid, rubbery nub?”
“Ashlynn!” Winnie rarely yelled, but she didn’t know what else to do. “Ashlynn, just, please have more respect for yourself. Okay?”
She shrugged. “It’s my body, Miss Downey. It’s my choice. No one forced me. I chose to send that pic.”
“It’s illegal.”
“You know what’s crazy? The age of consent in Ohio is sixteen. I can screw a man in his forties if I give him consent, but I can’t send him a nude. Maybe we should table all conversations on morality until the legal system figures out their shit.”
Ashlynn stood, like she was the one running the meeting. Winnie suddenly wondered where Mike Draper went. Did he go home? Did he get on the interstate and keep driving? Did he get breakfast? Did he even eat anymore? He’d gotten so skinny.
Ashlynn turned the knob, but didn’t open the door.
“If I send them nudes, then—and this is weird, I know—but they leave me alone. It’s like the picture is enough for them, and that’s all it is, just a picture. It’s not me. It’s an image with filters and edits. My nipples look nothing like that. I know it makes them jerk off or whatever, but that picture isn’t me. It’s not real. It’s just some dumb fantasy they’ve created for themselves. Fantasies aren’t real.” She shrugged. “Even if you can see them. They aren’t real.”
Ashlynn lingered in the doorway, seemingly turning over a thought, a thought she chose to keep hidden from Winnie. After she left, Winnie wondered if she’d also keep it hidden from herself.
Fifth period, Winnie went to McDonald’s for lunch and ate a McFlurry in the school’s parking lot, watching students tramp all over the campus grounds, doing whatever, knowing it was against the rules, but choosing not to act.
Sixth period, during lunch duty, she pretended not to hear all the awful things kids said with zero consideration she was feet away.
Seventh period, she called parents of students who were in danger of failing the semester, but no one ever answered those calls. Most phones had the same automated message: “The voicemail box is full.”
Eighth period, there was a fight.
Principal Hauser closed his office door and sat on his desk. Winnie wheeled out his office chair and positioned herself in front of Faris, a skinny, wiry senior, with black rimmed glasses, almost the same shade as his dark, Somali skin.
“You okay?” Hauser asked pointing to his eye, mirroring the budding bruise on Faris’ face.
Faris had played basketball his first three years of high school, even started last year, but didn’t try out this year. He said he couldn’t lose his job at Jets Pizza. Once he brought his six-year-old little brother to school with him. When asked why, he said, “Didn’t want him home alone with Dad—not even for an hour.”
“Last time you were in here, you said you were teaching yourself to read the Quran in Arabic. Said you wanted to realign yourself with your inner peace.” Hauser smiled. “Said Allah would guide you, so you’d stop fighting. I’m guessing you didn’t do the reading.”
“Facts,” Faris said, letting a grin slip.
The students liked Hauser. He was always in the halls, always talking to them. There were 1802 students in the building and Hauser knew all of them by name, first and last. He even knew something about them too. He was the same way with the teachers. His rich, black skin seemed to make his white teeth and the whites of his eyes gleam with an earnestness people instinctively sought. Faris had the same look. Soon, Faris was grinning and talking to Hauser. Winnie always sat in Hauser’s office after a fight. Hauser wanted her to observe how to navigate teenage boys revved up on testosterone and pride after a physical altercation.
“Was the other boy being racist?”
“Lowkey,” Faris said.
“Thought maybe that was the case with that kid.” He grimaced. “Kids said you threw the first punch.”
“Wasn’t a punch. I slapped him.”
“You slapped him?”
“He was acting like a little bitch, so I slapped him like a bitch.”
Hauser eyed Winnie to stop her from intervening. Now wasn’t the time to explain sexism to Faris.
“That might help your case, but this is strike three, Faris. You’ll have an expulsion hearing now.”
Faris shrugged.
“If me slapping some white boy is more offensive than white dudes walking behind little brothers with an app on their phone making whipping sounds, then whatever, man.”
“He was doing what?”
Hauser stood. Hayden, the other boy, was down the hall in Vice Principal Bowen’s office. Hauser took a step, but Winnie grabbed his wrist. When he looked at her, she shook her head and the frenzy dancing in his eyes slowly settled. He returned his attention to Faris.
“Aside from that highkey, not lowkey, but highkey, very racist shit, did Hayden do anything else to you?”
“He wasn’t doing it to me.”
“Who was he doing it to?”
Faris shrugged. “Don’t know. Some freshman. Saw the little dude crying and then saw white boy laughing and making his phone out to be like a whip. That’s when I heard the sound. Couldn’t do nothing like everyone else, so I went over and slapped his ass. Then he swung back. Then I swung back. Then you showed up.”
Hauser looked at Winnie. He shrugged. “Faris, go on home.”
“You calling Dad? If you do, call him now, you know I need to translate.”
Hauser shook his head. “Go on home. We’ll talk in the morning.”
Faris grabbed his bookbag. “For real though, if you’re calling mom or dad I’ll stay and translate. That is if they even pick up.”
“Not calling home today, but you need to be in my office first thing tomorrow morning. That’s the deal.”
Faris muttered “cool” and left.
“You’re not calling home?” Winnie asked.
“Doesn’t matter. It always goes to voice mail. Even when I use the translation app, it never seems to get anywhere with them.” He scratched head. “Remind me to get that kid breakfast tomorrow. He qualifies for food, but I never see him eat.” After a silence, he said, “Thanks, Winn.”
“For what?”
“For stopping me from killing that Hayden kid.” He shook his head. “How is it some white boys are more racist today than when I was in school?”
Hauser moved around the desk and Winnie traded spots with him. He let out a deep sigh and Winnie realized it’s probably the first time he’d sat down all day.
“One of those days,” she said.
“Every day is one of those days.” He’d knocked over his silver engraved nameplate when he sat down, sending it askew. He ran his fingers over the letters. “You doing okay?”
“Had a weird conversation with Ashlynn Yoder, but otherwise, same old same old.”
“No, not with the job. The job is … the job. It’s whatever. You okay with …” he trailed off as he bobbed his head and pointed at the window.
“You mean Draper. Yeah, I mean, he resigned, right? His choice. We should respect it.”
“Sure. Let’s pretend it was his choice.” Hauser gave an incredulous look reminding Winnie there was so much about the business of education she didn’t understand. “This job, I swear to you, this job used to make sense. The job’s always been exhausting, but it made sense. Actual sense. Hand to God, it did.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a piece of gum. He offered a piece to Winnie, but she shook her head. “We give, and we give, and we give. Give our time. Give our kindness. Give our patience. Give our understanding. Give second, third, twentieth chances and on and on.” He added another piece of gum and then another. “What has changed are the returns … or lack thereof. The stress and the pains used to be countered with the good. True good. Honest good. Now, each year, we are hacked down to the stump and need the summer to see if we can grow back.”
He added one more piece of gum and moved to the window. He chomped for ten more seconds before removing the wad and tossing it in the trash.
“Did you see him salute the building this morning?
“Yeah. I saluted back.”
Hauser laughed. “Me too.” He popped another piece of gum. “Call in sick tomorrow, Winn.”
“We have the National Honors Society induction tomorrow. I can’t—”
“Who cares. Take a mental health day. Decompress. If for no other reason to remind yourself this place will function whether you’re not here. If I’m not here. If Mike Draper isn’t here.” He tapped the window. “I worked with the man for two decades. I was a science teacher when he first started. He meant a lot to me, so I can only imagine what he meant to you.” He popped another piece of gum and continued to stare threw the slits in the blinds, past the parking, to anywhere else.
~ ~ ~
Winnie followed Hauser’s advice and put in for a personal day—she couldn’t lie and say she was sick. After she parked her car, she surprised herself by walking to The Goat, the restaurant/bar in her apartment complex, and ordered a Pinot Grigio.
As she sipped from her third glass, she scrolled through her last text exchange with Draper. They used to text all the time, or at least she’d text, and he’d respond. She’d have nightly questions about AP Lit and soon they were just texting about movies and books and politics, but in looking back over the thread, it wasn’t an exchange, just Draper answering her questions.
Last year, after Draper’s mom died, the texts essentially stopped. Thinking of you. So sorry for your loss. He never responded. She didn’t text him again until he’d been put on leave:
Winnie: Everything will work out.
Mr. Draper: You really shouldn’t be texting me.
Winnie: I know the protocol. Just wanted to say I know you’ll be back soon, and that the students miss you.
Mr. Draper: You really shouldn’t be texting me.
Mr. Draper: Take care, Kiddo.
She refused to read the unsent message she’d been drafted weeks ago.
“Miss Downey?”
It took a moment to recognize him. The last time she’d seen him was in her English 11
class her first year of teaching. His skinny teenage boyness had morphed into a broad-shouldered man. His moptop unkempt hair was now styled with gel and his sides were closely shaved. His face looked a bit puffy, but his arms seemed strong and his chest robust. A salmon collared shirt hugged his chest and biceps while khaki shorts grabbed his midthigh.
“Justin Applegate? How are you?”
“Officially an adult.” He tilted his beer bottle in her direction.
“Happens to all of us,” she said, feeling like she just lied
Justin was one of those lazy kids with a natural intelligence, but he hadn’t really grown those smarts because of his non-existent work ethic. He charmed his way through high school, getting grades he didn’t deserve, which happens a lot, especially with white boys.
“Sorry to bother you, Miss Downey, but I saw you and I just had to apologize for being such an asshat back in the day. And … I wanted to say you were right.”
“Right?”
In talking she realized how buzzed she’d gotten. She noticed his nice smile. She noticed the way his shirt’s sleeve tightly gripped his strong arms. She noticed all his kiddom was gone. Yet, despite his objective attractiveness and physical growth, to her, it was still six years ago, and all she wanted was for him to be absent from class to not add to the ruin of her day.
“Miss Downey—”
“Adult to adult. Call me Winnie.” Her drunken voice made this sound flirty.
He tipped his beer towards her. “Um—Winnie—you told me college would kick my ass because I wasn’t developing any study skills. And you were right. I almost failed out my freshman year. I was put on academic probation. My parents even made me pay them back first year’s tuition. But then I remembered what you told me: if I put as much effort into bettering myself as I did in figuring out ways to sway people to let me get by, then I could achieve anything. So, in my second year at OU, I buckled down, and then my third year I even made Dean’s List. I even graduated on time. Now I work at Nationwide as a system’s analyst and make six figures. How crazy is that?”
Winnie didn’t remember saying this advice to him. That first year was just a blur of pain and crying and stress and other miseries like driving to Indianapolis to break off her engagement. And when it came to Justin Applegate, all she remembered was a few laughs buried in an abundance of irksome moments. He wasn’t something she cared to revisit.
Justin ordered her a drink and told the bartender to put it on his tab.
“Thank you, Justin, but really you don’t need to—"
“It’s the least I could do. I don’t remember what happened in The Incredible Catsby—”
“The Great Gatsby?”
“Right. The Great Gatsby, but I do remember that you cared about me when no other adult seemed to. So, thank you.” He looked around seeing if she was there with anyone. “I’ll leave you to it.” He tilted his beer. “Winnie.”
She cringed in hearing him call her by her first name, glaring as he drifted back across the bar to sit down with a small group of attractive twenty-somethings day drinking. She didn’t recognize the others. Even Justin had moved on from high school. He scooted next to a pretty girl and put his arm around her small waist. Winnie rubbed her hand against her stomach and then pinched her thigh.
“Need a menu?” the bartender asked.
Winnie thought about all the sugar in white wine and shook her head. She unlocked her phone and read the unsent message to Mike Draper.
Winnie: When this whole administrative leave nonsense is finished, maybe we could get dinner sometime? I’m really doubting my choice to leave the classroom, and I just need to talk it out.
His career teetered on the brink, and she thought about herself, needing him to say the right thing to make her feel better. So selfish. She went to delete the unsent text when wavy bubbles appeared.
Frantic, she set her phone face down and turned to Justin, recalling a monologue from Mr. Draper when he saw how much she was struggling to connect with her students her first year teaching:
To them, we stay trapped in that space, Winn, like some forgotten time capsule. Students move on and live their lives, and if we did our job well, then they take any inspiration we offered with them. So sure, part of us goes on their journey with them, but we don’t know that part and never will. So, here’s the trick to teaching: you need to be okay in never knowing the good we’ve done. It exists, but it isn’t tangible. Not to us. Accepting this reality has to be enough. It has to.
After today, she would never say another word to Justin Applegate, and at some point, she’d most likely forget about him completely. Just like she’d forget about Ashlynn and Faris and all the others, but they might remember her. They might carry fragments of her attempts to help them. She flipped over her phone. No new messages. Maybe Mike Draper saw her unsent message and thought she was texting him. Maybe he clicked on their thread just to delete it, to move on, a life away from education, and all people connected to it. Maybe a nosey partner was going through his phone. Maybe…
Suddenly she caught herself smiling, a drunken joke to herself, thinking how Ashlynn would laugh. Should I send Mr. Draper a nude?
Justin Applegate laughed wildly as he pulled that pretty girl closer to him. Winnie couldn’t believe that something she said to him when she was twenty-two—something she doesn’t even remember saying—became a safety buoy in his life’s quagmire. And while she was flattered, she didn’t care, because hearing this news from Justin Applegate didn’t change her, it only changed him. Relationships should have a give and take, something to create balance, something helping both sides to grow, to be better. Her throat grew dry and couldn’t swallow. She’d been carrying inspiration from Mr. Draper for a decade. It'd become so important to her throughout her lifetime, she needed to be close to it, as it augmented every choice, trying to recreate what she felt sitting in her student desk on her last day of high school, reading the note he’d written to her on her last essay—a note he’d certainly forgotten—rereading it a thousand times since. She’d grown dependent on his belief, like it was a drug, making Mr. Draper—Mike Draper—Mike—her unknowing dealer.
She deleted her unsent text, wrote a new one, and sent it without hesitation.
Winnie: Sorry for making you my Giving Tree. Take care.
She gulped her wine then held her empty glass to Justin as a thank you, but after he nodded, she didn’t release him from her stare. He smiled at first, then his expression changed, going flat, then uneasy, until he finally looked away. But she continued scrutinizing him, daring him to see her in this intoxicating moment, to see the real her, whoever that was.
